Why? The answer is simple: who cares? It’s boring. There are no really good games other than word recognition speed tests. “These are pants! The pants are green!” Everyone repeat….!

So looking at my lesson plan for a Primary 4 class, I knew I’d lose the kids’ attention after a minute of, “The nurse works in the hospital. The policeofficer works in the police station. What’s his profession?”

“Profession?” They are like….ten years old. Try “job.”

So this is what I did: got flashcards for :
-‘Bank’ and put it together with paper dollar bills
-‘restaurant’ and put it together with other food flash cards, like pizza, hamburger, etc
-‘zoo’ and put it together with animal flash cards
-‘supermarket’ and put it together with other food cards

First, I quickly pre-taught, or reviewed the flash cards. Their attention span lasted JUST long enough. Then, I had the two girls and two boys line up against the wall. They had no clue what was going to happen. I held up the food cards and said, “Do you want these? First you need MONEY! Let’s go to the bank!” I sat down behind the table, and I made them repeat it. Then one by one, they came up to me and said, “Can I have money?” I handed them 4 dollars, and they had to go to the back of the line. Then, I put the restaurant card in front of me, signifying where we were, and said, “Okay, everybody, say, “Let’s go to the restaurant!” and held out the cards to the first kid. He had to say, “Can I have _____?” food, and I said, “Okay, one dollar please.”

They bought meals, food, and zoo animals. (I had them say, “I see a tiger!” and I said, “Zoo ticket money one dollar, please”)

THEY LOVED IT. They loved me! They got really excited. See, I knew it! 😀 Okay, so I didn’t teach them ‘engineer’ or ‘lawyer’ or the word ‘profession’ but I got in almost everything else 😀

When they ran out of money, they said, “Okage ga nakukatta! Okane ga nai!” (My money disappeared! I have no money!”) I said, “No money? Where do you go?” and they said, “BANK!!!!”…